So... LFR should be "nerfed" because they design loot tables poorly? Fix the loot tables then, don't punish everyone else because the loot tables are skimpy.

However, the trinket comparison doesn't apply for all classes. For many dps classes pre-heroic, the best trinkets are still the MV trinket and the DMC. I realize it's different for tanks and healers.

It is true that the jump to 522 is large. One wonders exactly what they were expecting people to stroll in their with. I also wonder if that larger jump is due to them wanting to make the differences between levels feel larger, and/or if they are trying to make room for the upgrade system coming back and for Thunderforged.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

Nooska wrote:The reason T13LFR was attractive to heroic T12 raider (especially tanks) was set boni primarily and trinkets - a little bit will creep in in regards to lower ilvl gear being better if better itemized than the higher ilvl gear, the 7 ilvl downgrade from T14H to T15L may come in to play, but with rng and the LFR not being able to be gamed like in T13, I don't consider this a real issue.

True.

Even with coins, gear drops in Panda LFR are a lot slower overall.LFR is going to be held back behind normal raiding, so normal and heroic raiders will see that content first.

Might a heroic raider go back to fill one RNG-cursed slot? Sure. So?...

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

So... LFR should be "nerfed" because they design loot tables poorly? Fix the loot tables then, don't punish everyone else because the loot tables are skimpy.

Unless you're somehow trying to imply that LFR "needs" to go to 502 and not 496 because people in LFR can't handle content, I don't even get where "punishment" comes in.The idea is simply that everything should stay consistent with each other, meaning it doesn't matter where they allocate items, the next tier should take that into account. As it is right now, their power jumps certainly aren't consistent with previous tiers, even after accounting for the effect of Item Upgrade, and that's the problem.

However, the trinket comparison doesn't apply for all classes. For many dps classes pre-heroic, the best trinkets are still the MV trinket and the DMC. I realize it's different for tanks and healers.

You are aware that actually amplifies the effort of T15 trinkets being valuable, not diminishes it, right?

The reason T13LFR was attractive to heroic T12 raider (especially tanks) was set boni primarily and trinkets - a little bit will creep in in regards to lower ilvl gear being better if better itemized than the higher ilvl gear, the 7 ilvl downgrade from T14H to T15L may come in to play, but with rng and the LFR not being able to be gamed like in T13, I don't consider this a real issue.

That's not actually an argument that people won't be going in there, it's just saying they'll be going in for longer. We already know what the set bonuses are.

Might a heroic raider go back to fill one RNG-cursed slot? Sure. So?...

So...."It's our expectation that Heroic raiders should have no interest in 5.2 Raid Finder gear. If you have item level 509+ gear from 5.0/5.1 Heroics, then the question is, why would you want item level 502 gear from the Raid Finder? Players wearing normal mode gear might find some slight upgrades in the Raid Finder in the first few weeks, but it's a safe bet that any gear that was upgraded with Valor Points will probably beat anything found in the Throne of Thunder Raid Finder."

Or do you want links to statements before this expansion that they have it as a design goal to ensure that Heroic raiders simply should not feel compelled to go into LFR because they acknowledged it was contributing to a diminished experience within the raid and frustration of bad design?

You're kind of going with this weird kick of trivialising what Blizzard has already admitted was a legitimate issue just because "TEH HARDCORES".

Darielle wrote:And for one, they said that they would like not to repeat the mistake that they acknowledged they made with T13 LFR, which involved making it attractive for Heroic T12 raiders.

This is my one gripe with the system - I do wish there weren't an incentive for heroic raiders to run LFR. But that could've been fairly trivially solved by making T15 LFR 496 instead of 502.

However, even as-is, I don't think it's as big a problem as people are making it out to be. The mistake they wanted to avoid wasn't that LFR should be completely irrelevant to us, IMO. It was the encouragement of gaming the system - running 5+ all-guild LFRs to try and funnel as much gear to the right people per run as possible. That's already been eliminated with the new loot system.

A player in a heroic guild will probably only have a few "gaps" at the outset of the new tier anyway. Most of their gear will already be 502+. With 14 bosses in the tier, I expect we'll see 4 LFR segments. So if the player only has one or two slots that could benefit from an LFR item, they can just run those one or two segments and be done.

Also, keep in mind that just like reputation, it's a temporary thing. A heroic progression guild will be clearing normal the first week, and will very rapidly accumulate ilvl 522 gear. Three or four weeks in, that LFR gear will all be completely irrelevant. It's not worth griping too much over it if it's a small effect that's only relevant for a few weeks.

I think it probably would have been a little better (or at least less controversial) to just shift everything down 6 ilvls. LFR at 496, Normal at 516/517, and then so on up from there. I have a few double-upgraded items at 517 already, so that would put them on par with normal mode gear, but those items are going to be in the minority.

The reason T13LFR was attractive to heroic T12 raider (especially tanks) was set boni primarily and trinkets - a little bit will creep in in regards to lower ilvl gear being better if better itemized than the higher ilvl gear, the 7 ilvl downgrade from T14H to T15L may come in to play, but with rng and the LFR not being able to be gamed like in T13, I don't consider this a real issue.

That's not actually an argument that people won't be going in there, it's just saying they'll be going in for longer.

But it is when applying a bonus pater argument. The chance of actually succeeding at getting that specific loot before its irelevant for you because you have it (or better) from normal/heroic mode, or that it is actually better when coming out of LFR than what you had (which would generally not be the case for a tank or dps, as lower ilvl means less stats, leaving "gimmick" trinkets), means that heroic raiders don't have anything to do in LFR from any reasonable standpoint.[Anecdotally I got the 2 piece set bonus for T14 from Sha before I got "it" from lfr - using coins]

Now I know (and agree) that there are any number of UN reasonable people playing wow, and that the closer you get to cutting edge the more unreasonable things raiders do - this however was not the problem in T13.We were far from cutting edge, and still, we felt a need to go to DS LFR for gear (even those of us mostly in T12H gear) because of set boni - the reason it was reasoable was that we could run alts through with mains of the same tokens and trade them to mains, which would give us an edge (admittedly I didn't do it that much on Mooska afterI got the 2T13 bonus, because I didn't like the 4 piece bonus, mainly because I hadn't had a need to even spec into the cooldown till we hit heroic T13 (by which time I was no longer sporting any LFR gear anyway apart from souldrinker).

Self-imposed requirements are unequal to game or design imposed requirements. And a heroic mode raider of T14 should not feel any reasonable need to do LFR aprt from for fun or practise or just seeing the fights.

Also, I guess I should add that I sort of dislike that it undermines their intended "catch-up" plan. The impression I got was that they wanted the previous tier to continue to be relevant as a way for guilds to catch up to the current one, rather than the Cataclysm method of "run the new 5-mans, then hop into the current tier." This just replaces the 5-mans with LFR. I guess since the loot is more limited and not guaranteed, they could still go back to pick up 496 gear, but I'm not sure most guilds will bother because the gear will be perceived as inferior.

On the LFR @ ilvl 496, having had to stop raiding, that would effectively leave me (and those liek me) behind teh curve so much that there would not be any reasonable chance at getting back in the game (excluding joining a further progressed guild, and effectively being carried) - if LFR was 496, that means that normal mode raiders would not be able to gear up even a slight bit to overcome the lower "skill level" (for lack of a better term) that is the reason its a normal mode raid group rather than a heroic mode raid group. The lower the skil level, the more an ilvl boost is needed to achieve the same - and already being handicapped by not having T14H gear means they are even further behind (or the raid has to be noticably easier, which would be a longevity issue for heroic raiders).

theckhd wrote:Also, I guess I should add that I sort of dislike that it undermines their intended "catch-up" plan. The impression I got was that they wanted the previous tier to continue to be relevant as a way for guilds to catch up to the current one, rather than the Cataclysm method of "run the new 5-mans, then hop into the current tier." This just replaces the 5-mans with LFR. I guess since the loot is more limited and not guaranteed, they could still go back to pick up 496 gear, but I'm not sure most guilds will bother because the gear will be perceived as inferior.

Having followed GCs tweets on the catchup subject, it was T14LFR stays relevant to get into T15 LFR to gear up to be able to raid "for real". The tier is still relevant, and dependant on the raid group, running T14 could still be relevant to gear up new people or alts faster than in LFR.

Nooska wrote:Self-imposed requirements are unequal to game or design imposed requirements. And a heroic mode raider of T14 should not feel any reasonable need to do LFR aprt from for fun or practise or just seeing the fights.

That said, I think you can actually make a stronger argument for why ilvl 496 is more appropriate for LFR than 502 from the perspective of a normal-mode raider.

Normal mode raids are no longer the trivial, intro-to-raiding experience they used to be. A lot of guilds struggle through normal modes now, whereas they used to stomp through the bulk of normal dragon soul. The whole "normal is easy, and everyone should get to try heroics" mindset of Cata has completely disappeared in that sense.

Now think about this new LFR from the perspective of a normal-mode raider that's progressing fast enough to clear Sha shortly before 5.2 comes out. The new LFR gear more or less invalidates all the gear they were working for. It's a stepping stone to normal-mode T15 gear, so it will feel mandatory for them to go in and possibly even spend raid nights doing LFR before making a serious attempt at normal modes.

I think it would be a little better if the LFR gear were at best a sidegrade from normal-mode gear, and a way to fill gaps. Even normal-mode raiders tend to find LFR pretty mind-numbing, in my experience. Or else all the normal-mode raiders I speak to are much more elitist than they deserve to be!

Nooska wrote:On the LFR @ ilvl 496, having had to stop raiding, that would effectively leave me (and those liek me) behind teh curve so much that there would not be any reasonable chance at getting back in the game (excluding joining a further progressed guild, and effectively being carried) - if LFR was 496, that means that normal mode raiders would not be able to gear up even a slight bit to overcome the lower "skill level" (for lack of a better term) that is the reason its a normal mode raid group rather than a heroic mode raid group. The lower the skil level, the more an ilvl boost is needed to achieve the same - and already being handicapped by not having T14H gear means they are even further behind (or the raid has to be noticably easier, which would be a longevity issue for heroic raiders).

I'm not sure I agree, but just to be clear - I wasn't suggesting LFR gear should be the only gear "nerfed." LFR, normal, and heroic gear would all drop 6 ilvls so that the power jumps were identical.

Assuming that wasn't your objection - I don't see how you'd be behind the curve. You'd still be getting gear that was 20 ilvls below what normal mode drops (516->496 vs. 522->502). A guild clearing normals that has full ilvl 496 gear isn't going to hit a brick wall on the first boss of an instance, because it will already be tuned around them having ilvl 496 gear.

The guild that may hit that brick wall is the one that hasn't fully progressed through normal, and thus doesn't have full 496 (maybe some leftover 489, 476, or even blues). That guild will still get a significant benefit from LFR gear, so the catch-up mechanism is still there.

Keep in mind that the tuning of the instance will shift with the ilvl of the gear as well. It doesn't matter whether you give ilvl 502 in LFR and tune the instance a little harder, or give ilvl 496 in LFR and tune the instance a little easier to compensate, provided the tuning difference is chosen appropriately.

Where are we getting the notion that LFR will be anything other than face-roll easy, no matter what loot it drops, from? In DS and in T14, LFR has always been disproportionately easy when you look at the potential rewards from it, and Blizzard has always said that it will be tuned so that the average group will clear it with little to no issues.

Fetzie wrote:Where are we getting the notion that LFR will be anything other than face-roll easy, no matter what loot it drops, from? In DS and in T14, LFR has always been disproportionately easy when you look at the potential rewards from it, and Blizzard has always said that it will be tuned so that the average group will clear it with little to no issues.

I didn't think anyone suggested otherwise so far, but maybe I missed it? The brick walls we're talking about are on normal modes. I was assuming that clearing LFR was a given.

theckhd wrote:Also, I guess I should add that I sort of dislike that it undermines their intended "catch-up" plan. The impression I got was that they wanted the previous tier to continue to be relevant as a way for guilds to catch up to the current one, rather than the Cataclysm method of "run the new 5-mans, then hop into the current tier." This just replaces the 5-mans with LFR. I guess since the loot is more limited and not guaranteed, they could still go back to pick up 496 gear, but I'm not sure most guilds will bother because the gear will be perceived as inferior.

That's why they are also making all the changes to the valor gear, so that's the other catchup tool.

But I do think their "keep older content relevant" actually is "require you to gring more to gear that alt".

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

theckhd wrote:Now think about this new LFR from the perspective of a normal-mode raider that's progressing fast enough to clear Sha shortly before 5.2 comes out. The new LFR gear more or less invalidates all the gear they were working for.

That was my initial reaction, as a slowly progressing (only 6/14) normal-mode raider. However, on reflection, I still think the new gear levels are fine. By providing a jump up from my current gear (490), T15 LFR provides big rewards and most players - perhaps especially normal-mode raiders - need those rewards to keep happily playing.

It's a stepping stone to normal-mode T15 gear, so it will feel mandatory for them to go in and possibly even spend raid nights doing LFR before making a serious attempt at normal modes.

Maybe I am not representative but I think LFR is effectively mandatory for normal raiders already (or at least those in the slow lane like me). It's the most fun way to get valor capped, outside of proper raiding. It's useful practice. It provides tier tokens. It gives us something to do when it's not raid night. It gives OS gear. In T15 it will provide rep for the only faction that will give you gear etc. It's a really big part of the game now. (Even bigger now that I am taking 3 alts through it, as well as my main). And if I am going to be doing it, I'll be happier if it's suitably rewarding. [In part this is because LFR has obvious downsides and costs - rather long queues, sometimes frustrating wipes and PUG bad behaviour, low drop rates etc.]

Very small incremental changes start to become "meh" to me - psychologically, those 0/2 upgrades don't do anything for me (except for a dps weapon) I'd rather save the valor if I could get pas the 3000 cap. The 476-483-489 upgrades; you start to question whether it's worth the hassle of enchanting, regemming, reforging. But offer me a 496 Shieldwall rep item or normal raid drop and I'll start salivating. I'm already looking forward to a LFR with 502 gear; with 496, I'd feel a little short changed and less enthusiastic about something I'll be likely grinding for months.

I think Blizzard understand this psychology - and that less enthusiastic gamers are more likely to stop playing.

theckhd wrote:Now think about this new LFR from the perspective of a normal-mode raider that's progressing fast enough to clear Sha shortly before 5.2 comes out. The new LFR gear more or less invalidates all the gear they were working for.

That was my initial reaction, as a slowly progressing (only 6/14) normal-mode raider. However, on reflection, I still think the new gear levels are fine. By providing a jump up from my current gear (490), T15 LFR provides big rewards and most players - perhaps especially normal-mode raiders - need those rewards to keep happily playing.

It's a stepping stone to normal-mode T15 gear, so it will feel mandatory for them to go in and possibly even spend raid nights doing LFR before making a serious attempt at normal modes.

Maybe I am not representative but I think LFR is effectively mandatory for normal raiders already (or at least those in the slow lane like me). It's the most fun way to get valor capped, outside of proper raiding. It's useful practice. It provides tier tokens. It gives us something to do when it's not raid night. It gives OS gear. In T15 it will provide rep for the only faction that will give you gear etc. It's a really big part of the game now. (Even bigger now that I am taking 3 alts through it, as well as my main). And if I am going to be doing it, I'll be happier if it's suitably rewarding. [In part this is because LFR has obvious downsides and costs - rather long queues, sometimes frustrating wipes and PUG bad behaviour, low drop rates etc.]

Very small incremental changes start to become "meh" to me - psychologically, those 0/2 upgrades don't do anything for me (except for a dps weapon) I'd rather save the valor if I could get pas the 3000 cap. The 476-483-489 upgrades; you start to question whether it's worth the hassle of enchanting, regemming, reforging. But offer me a 496 Shieldwall rep item or normal raid drop and I'll start salivating. I'm already looking forward to a LFR with 502 gear; with 496, I'd feel a little short changed and less enthusiastic about something I'll be likely grinding for months.

I think Blizzard understand this psychology - and that less enthusiastic gamers are more likely to stop playing.

This.

Considering the number of raiders here that haven't cleared HoF normal yet, or don't even have current raid groups, the boost does encourage them to keep going.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

Self-imposed requirements are unequal to game or design imposed requirements. And a heroic mode raider of T14 should not feel any reasonable need to do LFR aprt from for fun or practise or just seeing the fights.

Self-imposed requirements are completely equal to design imposed requirements, because they only exist when the design incentivises the activity.You can't separate the two out without invaliding pretty much most of the progress the game has made in the last few years.

But it is when applying a bonus pater argument. The chance of actually succeeding at getting that specific loot before its irelevant for you because you have it (or better) from normal/heroic mode, or that it is actually better when coming out of LFR than what you had (which would generally not be the case for a tank or dps, as lower ilvl means less stats, leaving "gimmick" trinkets), means that heroic raiders don't have anything to do in LFR from any reasonable standpoint.[Anecdotally I got the 2 piece set bonus for T14 from Sha before I got "it" from lfr - using coins]

The chance of actually succeeding at getting "that specific loot" before it's irrelevant to you don't change whether you're a Normal mode or a Heroic mode raider. Ultimately, it comes down to "Do until X", and as long as there is no better version that has dropped (and particularly in a 10-man which is where the majority of raiders play nowadays, that is not going to be a quick process), it exists.

The concern that was posed to Blizzard, and which they responded on, was the fact that the Do exists at all, not quibbling over the degree of X.

When the system is set up so that doing Y gives you a reward or sets you in a better spot than not doing Y, you cannot call the person who does that "unreasonable". In fact, that person is playing exactly to the system from any reason/rational standpoint. LFR certainly doesn't "take over" any activity, since it is the only other source for the raid trinkets and bonuses and slots that only have something in MSV in the game, and for a player at that point, the part that makes LFR "less fun" (its triviality) also applies to every other type of content available.

So when you're looking at it from the point of view of its intended target to its reward ratio, you go completely off the chain when it involves even Normal mode raiders. In theory, LFR is the version of content that should be focused purely on people that don't actually do structured raiding. The reward isn't about trying to keep Normal mode players "entertained by LFR", it's about giving an alternate progression path to the people who view LFR as their progression path. A 483 to 502 jump for the content that is supposedly going to be gated at 480, and will be nerfed so that groups can succeed with minimal effort, is sheer overkill. You would be extremely hard pressed to suggest that 496 would somehow diminish this experience, because the Normal mode experience is NOT designed around doing LFR anyway.

You would also be extremely hard pressed to say that 496 would put people behind the curve when the basis of 496 is that Normal would not be 522, and therefore the stuff that they will be tuning around 522 (like Lei Shen), would be tuned around the new value (e.g. 517). Functionally, you would be no worse off in that department.

However, even as-is, I don't think it's as big a problem as people are making it out to be. The mistake they wanted to avoid wasn't that LFR should be completely irrelevant to us, IMO. It was the encouragement of gaming the system - running 5+ all-guild LFRs to try and funnel as much gear to the right people per run as possible. That's already been eliminated with the new loot system.

Every single reference that Blizzard has made before Pandaria went live and continue to make is to exactly that - LFR should be irrelevant to Heroic Raiders. They even just said in that thread that "It's our expectation that Heroic raiders should have no interest in 5.2 Raid Finder gear. If you have item level 509+ gear from 5.0/5.1 Heroics, then the question is, why would you want item level 502 gear from the Raid Finder?".

In the reference to LFR on the EU forums in that massive thread, their only reference was to acknowledge that gaming wouldn't be possible. The entire thread was dealing with things that would go beyond that - ensuring that LFR's ilvl was sufficiently below that Heroic raiders should have NO interest in LFR gear. Ensuring that end-boss weapons wouldn't have a higher ilvl in LFR to ensure that they wouldn't creep up to be attractive. It's completely consistent with their current comments that they DO want to make sure Heroic raiders have no interest in going after anything in LFR - they're apparently just baffled at why people might want the new 502 stuff or why 7ilvls might not be enough.

But the argument still seems to be revolving around "ZOMG there's only one trinket in the current content for me".

Without looking at the loot tables, a heroic raider still might want a new 496 trinket from the new LFR due to stats or the on-use. Same even could apply for tier bonuses,especially when going for 4-piece.

I'll respect Theck's argument that the scaling should be toned down, but to think that 6 ilvls is magically going to keep every heroic raider out of the new LFR is really silly indeed.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

Klaudandus wrote:So give us some baseline hit and exp, so we dont hog all the hit/exp gear?

No, I mean get rid of hit/expertise entirely. For everyone. To paraphrase a really good point Hamlet made on twitter a few weeks ago: Reforging was added to help improve the hit/exp system, because otherwise loot that wasn't ideal got ignored. So you have two systems in the game (reforging and hit/exp) designed to make sure you hit the boss 100% of the time.

Is that really very interesting? Or is it just cumbersome? If everyone just loads their character up in AMR or another utility and hits an "optimize" button after every item upgrade, it's not really very interesting.

I think GC (or another blue) has hinted that they're not sure if hit/exp are still interesting stats. I wouldn't mind if they just got rid of them and adjusted rating conversions appropriately. But they'd still have to do something to make dodge/parry more attractive, in any case.

Wonder if we would be better by consolidating stats, like I have suggested in the past.

Hit and Expertise get consolidated into a stat called Accuracy, Avoidance consolidates Parry and Dodge, Power consolidates Haste and Crit, and Mastery is a consolidation of Mastery and Spirit

We could still have Dodge, Parry, Crit, Haste and all those in our character sheets, but then a class/spec converts, as an example, 100 pts of avoidance into... lets say, 40 parry and 60 dodge, and a different one into 60 dodge/40 parry, et al?

That way gear can get more interesting, as you would never get full avoidance on a piece of loot.

Not saying it should be now, but would be an interesting thing to have considering we're more than likely gonna have the ilvl crunch next expansion specially seeing how high, and silly, things are starting to become.

halabar wrote:But the argument still seems to be revolving around "ZOMG there's only one trinket in the current content for me".

Without looking at the loot tables, a heroic raider still might want a new 496 trinket from the new LFR due to stats or the on-use. Same even could apply for tier bonuses,especially when going for 4-piece.

I'll respect Theck's argument that the scaling should be toned down, but to think that 6 ilvls is magically going to keep every heroic raider out of the new LFR is really silly indeed.

Yeah, trinkets are the slot most affected here, since we're generally using ilvl 489 stamina trinkets.

But like I said, I'm not sure it's as big a deal anymore. 502 is still below the average ilvl you'd expect a serious heroic raider to have going into normal T15. There might be one or two slots where there's an upgrade in LFR for those players, but only for the first week or two. They'll likely be running it for valor anyway, and if not they can pick just the particular quarter in which their upgrade happens to drop.

One or two LFRs the first few weeks is a minor inconvenience. I'd rather do that than 90 VP worth of dailies anyway. And it will be obsoleted in a few weeks as we acquire 520 gear. It seems like a mountain/molehill situation to me. The important thing is that there's no incentive for groups to chain-run all of LFR 5 or 6 times a week in rotating groups to accumulate as much tier as possible for heroic progression.

For 25 mans, sure. For 10s, there are items we still have never even seen drop yet...

Then drops are a bit weird this tier, for example there is only one non-spirit caster ring available across all 3 instances. Mages are left with either using a spirit ring (which I think actually works out to be BiS) or the 489 ring from valor. I'm sure they will be running LFR for a while.